Civics Lesson

Very little coherence can be expected from a state that looks like the thigh and leg of a plump person drawn by an untalented six-year-old.

It's tough to steal an election in broad daylight when the eyes of the nation are upon you.

Tammy Faye Bakker and Katherine Harris, the secretary of state of the Sunshine State, were separated at birth, and their mother, while enceinte , had a frightening encounter with a Revlon truck.

Old crocks never die -- they just look that way (inspiration for this insight must be credited to Warren Christopher and James Baker).

Republicans, they of the party of states rights and federal wrongs, believe it's un-American to sue in state court but just what the Founding Fathers had in mind to sue in federal court.

Democrats, they of the party that believes the federal government has all the rights and the states should learn to live with it, insist that the federal judiciary is violating the nation's sacred honor, the Constitution and the inalienable right of Floridians to mess up their ballot by sticking its nose into how states conduct a federal election.

We never knew that politics and voting are discrete and separate activities. But we do now, thanks to George Bush, who makes the distinction on the basis of his argument against hand counts (except in Texas).

Al Gore, inventor of the Internet, is, in fact, a closet Luddite, as revealed by his deep mistrust of machines (especially when they register Bush votes).

The electorate, faced by a choice between two lessers, chose not to choose.

The flaw is not in the way we vote but in the way we nominate. A Bradley-McCain contest still might have been mighty close, but we have trouble believing the aftermath would be anywhere near as ludicrous.

W hat, we wondered, would Uncle Earl have done in the circumstances?

Earl is not our uncle, mind you.

He was kind of everybody's uncle, especially if they happened to live in Louisiana, of which he was governor during the Eisenhower Presidency. Although the brother of the notorious Huey, Earl was a charismatic and extraordinary political personage in his own right.

Bringing Earl to mind was a communique from a gracious gentleman named William C. Love Jr., who once lived in New Orleans, informing us that the line we recently printed about the Philadelphia politician who wanted to be buried in Chicago when he died so as to be able to stay active in politics actually was first uttered by Earl Long, with, of course, the desired burial ground being in Louisiana.

We're grateful to Mr. Love not only for setting the record straight but also for sending along an old newspaper column written by Tris Kelso chronicling a string of Earl's linguistic pearls, as well as a few of his beguiling capers.

Of particular relevance to Florida is what Earl had to say of his own state's attorney general, a chap named Jack P.F. Gremillion. "If you want to hide something from Jack Gremillion," Earl chortled, "hide it in a law book." Why do we feel that's just as apt today directed at almost any of the legal hangdogs crowding the courtrooms in Tallahassee and similar points?

But the question that led off this little blurb is truly an intriguing one. For a babble of rulings from the bench and a deadlock in the process that has put the presidential election itself on hold wouldn't have fazed Earl a whit. He was, remember, the governor who, when he suffered a breakdown and was committed to a state institution, quickly fired the director of state hospitals and was promptly released by the new director.

Heck, with Earl running Florida, we'd have had a new President within an hour (sooner, if he hadn't stopped for breakfast).

D ominoes.

They're also known in this neighborhood as big tech stocks.

And one after another, they've been knocked over. Flat.

What hit them, each and every one, was a blast of reality in the form of disappointing earnings, forecasts of slower growth or, often as not, both.

The lastest casualty to fail the market's expectations and pay the price was
Hewlett-Packard
. On the negative disclosure, its stock dropped by more than four points, and that after it had already been cut to below 40 from a high above 68 in mid-July.

H-P, in case you've forgotten -- and apparently, a lot of its fans had -- makes computers and printers and faxes and related stuff and very nice computers and printers and faxes, indeed. Prices of computers and their trusty companions have fallen with remarkable regularity, and, we suspect, it's no accident that the official moan cited the impact of disproportionate sales of low-profit products as a prime reason for the unpleasant surprise.

In some ways, it was all inevitable or, at the very least, predictable. When Carly Fiorina was enticed to leave Lucent and take over as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in July '99, she was anointed a corporate savior by the large congregration of analysts following the company, with the financial press acting as the hosanna choir. Never mind that H-P had a few mediocre but hardly terrible quarters and had already righted itself before Ms. Fiorina came on board.

What's more, the canonization has proceeded apace ever since and, if anything, intensified. Steve Schwartz, options trader, humorist and historian of market trivia, claims that by his scrupulous count, Ms. Fiorina so far this waning year has edged out Alan Greenspan in mentions in the financial press.

We can't blame Ms. Fiorina for the foolishness of analysts or journalists, but we never got the feeling she did much to discourage all the hype, either. And the magic may be gone but the misperception still lingers. Even in last week's stories carrying the bad news on the company and the stock, there was reference to the company being a "sluggish" giant before she arrived and waved her magic prod.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.